


Predetermined

by kesomon



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Predestination, Temporal Paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-09
Updated: 2007-06-09
Packaged: 2018-08-18 11:08:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8160034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kesomon/pseuds/kesomon
Summary: For every person who stopped, who listened, who chose to step inside the TARDIS, history was already in motion. They all had a purpose - even if they, he, or the universe itself, were yet to discover what that purpose will be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set directly post-Smith & Jones. Predestined Paradoxes are my bread and butter, I just love them when they're done right.
> 
> Originally posted to FFN 6/09/2007. Edited for spelling mistakes but otherwise posted in its original format.

There is no such thing, the Doctor is fond of saying, as an ordinary person.

Timelines are a tricky business. What is, was, and will always be, and prefers to remain that way if it has any say in the matter. The Doctor knows this to be fact.

For every person who stopped, who listened, who chose to step inside the TARDIS, history was already in motion. They all had a purpose - even if they, he, or the universe itself, were yet to discover what that purpose will be.

Susan had been meant to fall in love on a war-torn, backwater little blue planet, and though she hadn't known it at the time, he suspected that was why she stayed with him when her parents had, as all humans do, withered into dust. In turn, she was also meant to be there to bring Ian and Barbara on board, because the one thing they needed most was someone to open their minds to the universe.

When Vicki joined them, it was already written that she would become part of Trojan history. When Steven snuck aboard, his name was already recorded as the first and greatest leader of a civilisation that would help to shape the galaxy into the first of many Great and Bountiful Human Empires. The fact they needed rescuing was merely a sideline to the cosmic balance of things.

When he met Jo for the first time, he didn't see a girl, barely yet a woman, whose bright smile and innocent manner destroyed a good day's work on fixing his dematerialisation circuit. It was why he gave her the sapphire – she was hinged to be the turning point of his life. And, later in her life, their timelines would intertwine again as her son, Ianto Jones, secretary-slash-tea boy to Jack Harkness, tried and failed to stop Harper from opening the Cardiff rift.

They all had a purpose to complete, by touching his life. He saw it in Nyssa, who was orphaned in an act of survival, and so would help others to survive, which was why his ship docked with Terminus when it sought out a safe port.

He saw it in Mel, whose eyes shone with the firelight that matched the gleam in Glitz's gaze, and so he nudged her down the right path. And he saw it in Ace and Hex, whose paths had intersected long before either had joined him, and which would rejoin in the past of the future when Times Vigilante took up her burden, because of one young woman he and Evelyn had helped in another life.

But there were those whose purposes had twisted out of his control. Katarina, meant to die to save their lives, but a death he would never be able to forget. Adric, who fought so bravely to buy them the time, and faced his end in silence, his brother's sash finally earned. Peri Brown, who gave him something to die for, and in return he made her into Schrödinger's botanist. Jack Harkness, dead at the end of a Dalek gun and abandoned to an empty space hub, whose destiny was already written the guiding force at the turn of the century for all humanity.

He grins with exuberance, clutching the console with one hand as he reaches across, clasping the newest's hand in a firm shake. "Welcome aboard, Miss Jones!"

And he wonders, watching the timelines flex and turn, what her purpose will be in the end.


End file.
